aleatory since 1999

March 31, 2001

In our biggest cities, population

In our biggest cities, population growth is being fed by the increasing number of Hispanic and Asian residents, yet the national debate around race and ethnicity remains disproportionately focused on white and black Americans. Too many political leaders are still staring at the rear-view mirror, looking back at what the country was, not at what it is becoming. As the magnitude of this demographic transformation begins to sink in, every institution of American society will have to rethink its policies and priorities, every political organization will have to refashion its platform and strategies.

Juan Gonzales writes for In These Times about the results of the 2000 Census. I sure wish I'd learned some Spanish in high school; I think I'm going to look into an immersion course.

March 30, 2001

Upcomingmovies.com, which is just what

Upcomingmovies.com, which is just what it says it is, has such mass appeal that I can't believe I've never heard of it before. I feel silly posting it here. Surely you've already heard of it--right? Am I "out of the loop"? Is this post now too much like something from a David Foster Wallace story? Should I just end it?

The Anglo hegemony was only

The Anglo hegemony was only an intermittent phase in California's arc of identity, extending from the arrival of the Spanish. The Hispanic nature of California has been there all along, and it was temporarily swamped between the 1880's and the 1960's, but that was an aberration. This is a reassertion of the intrinsic demographic DNA of the longer pattern, which is part of a California-Mexico continuum.

This MacOS X Issues page

Drug reform advocates believe that

Drug reform advocates believe that their cause got a big boost from the movie "Traffic," which dramatized the folly of the war on drugs and its huge cost to families. What is becoming clear is that the public wants no more of the inhumane idiocy that castrated the judicial system, stole years from the lives of people such as Anthony Papa and squandered billions on building and maintaining prisons instead of helping people sort out their lives.

The Washington Post's Judy Mann checks in on New York and New Mexico, where politicians are reconsidering harsh drug laws. (Note to Post: stop putting Mann on your comics page! Several of her fans at randomWalks think it's a little marginalizing for her principled columns to share space with Garfield and Hagar the Horrible.)

Think of me as Chomsky

March 28, 2001

The website probably can't begin

The website probably can't begin to do it justice, but the wacky British comedy/game show Shooting Stars is probably the funniest thing I've ever seen. I nearly hemorrhaged watching one episode in which a contestant careened off a pedestal after colliding with a life-sized stuffed bear that flew at him as it hung by a rope from the ceiling. And I swear I wasn't the least bit intoxicated. It appears, however, that the show's not on the Beeb anymore. The website probably won't get you going unless you've actually seen the show, and who knows what the odds of that are. Yet I blog it, hopefully not in vain.

Asian American young women, many of whom are born without
"double eyelids," often have plastic surgery to "Caucasianize"
their eyes. Is it a cosmetic boost or a product of racist culture?
(on WireTap, AlterNet's zine for socially conscious youth)

March 25, 2001

Minnie Bruce Pratt is a

Minnie Bruce Pratt is a modern day Lillian Smith and my new hero. She is a poet, essayist, speaker, activist, a white woman born and raised in the South, and partner of transgender author activist Leslie Feinberg. She tells me not to place her in the role of the speaker, the poet and remove myself from that possibility; that I should tell my truth, and tell it and tell it and not hold her above me but to do it.

From the chapter "Identity: Skin Blood Heart" (1983) in Rebellion: Essays 1980-1991 that suggests what's in it for white people to fight for change:

Where does the need come from, the inner push to walk into change, if we are women who, by skin color, ethnicity, birth culture, are in a position of material advantage where we gain at the expense of others, of other women? A place where we can have a degree of safety, comfort, familiarity, just by staying put. Where is our need to change what we were born into? What do we have to gain?...

So this is one gain for me as I change: I learn a way of looking at the world that is more accurate, complex, multilayered, multidimensioned, more truthful. To see the world of overlapping circles, like movement on the mill pond after a fish has jumped, instead of the courthouse square with me at the middle, even if I am on the ground. I feel the need to look differently because I've learned that what is presented to me as an accurate view of the world is frequently a lie: so that to look through an anthology of women's studies that has little or no work by women of color is to be up on that ledge above the town and be thinking I see the town, without realizing how many lives have been pushed out of sight, beside unpaved roads....

When I acknowledge what my people, what those who are like me, have done to people with less power and less safety in the world, I can make a place for things to be different, a place where I can feel grief, sorrow, not to be sorry for others, but to mourn, to expand my circle of self, follow my need to loosen the constrictions of fear, be a break in the cycle of fear and attack. When I can do this, that is a second gain....

It is painful to keep understanding this separation within myself and in the world. Sometimes this pain feels only like despair. Yet I have felt it also to be another kind of pain, where the need to be with other women can be the breaking through the shell around me, a coming through into a new place, where, with understanding and change, the loneliness won't be necessary. And when this happens, then I feel a third gain....

Got another one of those

Got another one of those Pocket Calls the other day. You know what I'm talking about - you pick up the phone, and all you hear is muffled ambience. Someone's cell phone has called you from inside their pocket, and the call lasts forever because the person doesn't even know about it. Stupid pocket calls.

My brother's cell phone called me from his car once. I was like Mulder 25 minutes into the X-Files: "I don't know how or why, but I think my brother just called us and he doesn't know it," I said feeling pretty clever. My wife, of course, was all Scully: "What? Are you sure? Let me see the phone... yeah, it sounds like he's in his car talking to his friends and his cell phone is on the seat and someone sat on it and it turned on and called us by itself." I'll never know how she did that. I read Cardhouse today.

March 24, 2001

Instead of using the Internet

Instead of using the Internet to belittle their friends, randomWalks editors can create stark beauty by visiting haikuhaiku. Point your phone to wap.haikuhaiku.com and see haiku written by other people when they were standing at the same place you are at that moment. or something.

If it's a little like

Socializing with the gilded oligarchy,

Socializing with the gilded oligarchy, that's what you get if you pay $20,000 to go to Harvard. I can understand paying for that, even though it's a total rip-off. But to go to some small liberal arts school that charges the same amount, I just think is absurd. I'm really angry about that.

When was the last time you saw a rock star use the word "oligarchy" in a write-up? For that reason, and many more, I love Stephen Malkmus.

Missed us. Better luck next

Missed us. Better luck next time.

From a message posted to a Californian website by "Dave", a fisherman in the Mir target zone. The BBC is carrying some eyewitness accounts of the unique event. You'll also want to see some pictures, I suppose.

March 22, 2001

In its original literal sense,

In its original literal sense, "moral relativism" is simply moral complexity. That is, anyone who agrees that stealing a loaf of bread to feed one's children is not the moral equivalent of, say, shoplifting a dress for the fun of it, is a relativist of sorts. But in recent years, conservatives bent on reinstating an essentially religious vocabulary of absolute good and evil as the only legitimate framework for discussing social values have redefined "relative" as "arbitrary." That conflation has been reinforced by social theorists and advocates of identity politics who argue that there is no universal morality, only the value systems of particular cultures and power structures.

In this country whites once

In this country whites once set themselves apart from blacks and claimed privileges for themselves while denying them to others. Now, on the basis of race, blacks are claiming special status and reserving for themselves privileges they deny to others. Isn't one as bad as the other?

The answer is no. One can see why by imagining that it is not 1993 but 1955, and that we are in a town in the South with two more or less distinct communities, one white and one black. No doubt each community would have a ready store of dismissive epithets, ridiculing stories, self-serving folk myths, and expressions of plain hatred, all directed at the other community, and all based in racial hostility. Yet to regard their respective racisms--if that is the word--as equivalent would be bizarre, for the hostility of one group stems not from any wrong done to it but from its wish to protect its ability to deprive citizens of their voting rights, to limit access to educational institutions, to prevent entry into the economy except at the lowest and most menial levels, and to force members of the stigmatized group to ride in the back of the bus. The hostility of the other group is the result of these actions, and whereas hostility and racial anger are unhappy facts wherever they are found, a distinction must surely be made between the ideological hostility of the oppressors and the experience-based hostility of those who have been oppressed.

That's why, last week,

That's why, last week, I introduced H.J. Res. 28, a constitutional amendment giving every American the right to a job. I ask for your support.

Moral/economic-centered politics means we must fight for comprehensive and universal health care for all Americans. That's why, last week, I introduced H.J. Res. 29, giving every American the right to health care. Health care is a human right. I hope you'll support it.

We must fight for affordable housing for all Americans, not just public housing for the poor and subsidized housing for the working poor. That why, last week, I introduced H.J. Res. 30, giving every American the right to safe, sanitary and affordable housing. Housing is a human right.

We must fight for a public educational system that is of equal high quality for all 52 million children in 85,000 public schools in 15,000 different school districts. That's why, last week, I introduced H.J. Res. 31 giving every citizen the right to an education. Education too is a human right. I need your support.

We must fight for equal opportunity for all, including women; and fight for equal pay and comparable worth. That's why, last week, I introduced H.J. Res. 32, giving women equal rights. I need your input and support.

We must fight for environmental policies that will give us a clean, safe and sustainable environment. That's why, last week, I introduced H.J. Res. 33, giving every American the right to a clean, safe and sustainable environment.

Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. (who is a major supporter of abolishing the death penalty) recently made an amazing speech to ACORN activists. I wonder if there are any co-sponsors? Is there a companion bill in the Senate? Is the media covering these bills? Would most Americans support these measures? I bet they would. Will Congress even vote on something like this? I bet they won't. Isn't democracy a wonderful thing?

"Maybe we can talk about

Alternet is carrying an interesting

Alternet is carrying an interesting follow-up to Tim Wise's School Shootings and White Denial essay, and of course it will precipitate a storm of denial over on MetaFilter, though I hope we can take the discussion in a different direction this time. Unfortunately there are more than a few people over there devoted to promoting color-blindness as the solution to racism out of one side of their mouth, and reminding me that I'm white (and therefore have no right to take certain positions on racism) out of the other.

I was about to steal

You have to remember that

You have to remember that this was right after Vanilla Ice hit it big and then crashed. They lost interest when they found out I was white. But the thing about that experience that was most reassuring was that some producers told me, by listening to my demo tapes, that they thought I was black.

"If distributing code is illegal,

March 18, 2001

In the summer of 1949,

In the summer of 1949, as the story goes, inveterate gambler Nicholas "Nick the Greek" Dandolos approached Benny Binion with an unusual request-to challenge the best in a high-stakes poker marathon. Binion agreed to set up a match between Dandolos and the legendary Johnny Moss, with the stipulation that the game be played in public view.

During the course of the marathon, which lasted five months with breaks only for sleep, the two men played every form of poker imaginable. Moss ultimately won "the biggest game in town" and an estimated $2 million. When the Greek lost his last pot, he arose from his chair, bowed slightly, and uttered the now-famous words, "Mr. Moss, I have to let you go." Dandolos then went upstairs to bed.

The bread I could eat

The bread I could eat three times a day, with or without different combinations of pulses, vegetables and spices, is n'jera, the flat bread made by Ethiopians from a grain called tef. The method is simplicity itself: you simply add a starter of batter that has stood since the last cooking and fermented naturally to more tef flour and water to make a new batter and let it stand until the bubbles begin to rise. It is then cooked on a flat surface no hotter than is necessary to dry it without colouring it.

This column is making me hungry. Speaking of bread, if you haven't discovered the intense pleasure that Great Harvest bread can bring, get thee to a bakery!

March 17, 2001

The Eden Project? This must

In this form of cultural

In this form of cultural transvestism, the "Indian" was reinscribed as an icon of a uniquely "American" white male privilege.--Dion Dennis, CTheory

Researching for a poem I'm writing (based on the poem "Red Men" by Jennifer Lisa Vest), I came to learn about The Improved Order of Red Men, a lovely racist, mason-like organization that was open only to whites from its founding in 1813 until 1974. Still thriving with legal standing as a benevolent order in New York and a fraternity chartered by Congress, the IORM and its ladies auxiliary, The Degree of Pocahontas, believes in

"Love and Respect of the American Flag, Creating and inspiring a greater love for the United States of America, and Perpetuating the beautiful legends and traditions of a vanishing race and the keeping alive of its customs, ceremonies, and philosophies."

They do this in part by maintaining a museum that proudly boasts possession of a watercolor by Adolf Hitler and a peaceblanket of Apache Chief Geronimo and by giving to the order's selected charity, the Alzheimer's Association.

March 16, 2001

Most commentators characterize this mushroom

Most commentators characterize this mushroom ominously as "toxic" or "poisonous". Somewhat more lightheartedly, Aurora relates the apocryphal tale of the elderly woman who accidentally consumed G. spectabilis. She laughed and cried uncontrollably. When the authorities came to carry her away to the hospital, she remarked, "If this is the way you die from mushroom poisoning, I'm all for it!"

"Listen," she said, impatient

"Listen," she said, impatient with my questions. "There isn't really any training. Be aggressive. As long as they hear confidence in your voice, you're OK. Mostly they're calling because they're depressed and need a friend."

Eric Meyer, author of O'Reilly's

March 15, 2001

CSS layout techniques in effect.

CSS layout techniques in effect. Standing on the shoulders of giants, randomWalks has done the dirty deed, divorced style from content (really just a trial separation), and is eagerly awaiting your honest opinion of the result. Bug reports welcome, pls include details. (If you're using IE5+, NS6, or Mozilla and the site doesn't look pretty much like this screenshot, then something's wrong.) This site is not flattered by Netscape 4.x; for information about upgrading to a better browser, visit the Web Standards Project.

'American Desi' is a fun-loving

'American Desi' is a fun-loving romantic comedy reminiscent of the great teen films of the eighties like "16 Candles" and "Pretty in Pink," mixed with the fresh hip-hop style of "House Party" with a uniquely Indian flavor.?? From Kris, an All-American boy from India, to Ajay, an Afro-Centric Hindu homeboy, to Farah, a devoutly religious but modern Muslim girl, 'American Desi' tells the story of a unique set of characters and their culture from a decidedly hip and youthful point of view. Like the masala films of India, 'American Desi' is so full of music and dancing that it might very well do to Bhangra and Garba what "Saturday Night Fever" did to Disco!

American Desi opens in a limited nationwide (USA) release Friday (in theaters near you, you lucky bastards.) Why is this the first I'm hearing of it? Sounds like a must-see. I was browsing PBS listings and came across an interesting looking film called "American Sons" about racism towards Asian American men. I haven't watched it yet, but I did notice that Peace Development Fund supported the film.

"What am I doing wrong?"Poverty

If you want to

If you want to hear interesting, ambitious, challenging pop music these days, the place to turn is not mainstream radio but television -- and not MTV but commercials for establishment products like banks, phone companies and painkillers.

by attacking women who supported

by attacking women who supported third parties as naive, irresponsible, or even misogynist for voting their consciences on race and class issues, organized feminism has undermined its credibility as an inclusive movement. Its leaders might do well to remember that - and work to correct it - the next time they wonder why so many young women, women of color and working-class women say they feel alienated from feminism.

Was I the first person to post a Tim Wise quote here? I feel like he came out of nowhere. Maybe I wasn't paying attention. Maybe I am just affording him the luxury of theoretical invisibility. But in general, I'm not sure he's all that. But I did love his article in LIP magazine. And there's a new issue.

March 13, 2001

The LA Times is running

The LA Times is running two fascinating stories today:

When you're white, you have the luxury of invisibility. Anything that peels back the veil that keeps you invisible and makes you opaque is jarring and frightening to white folks. You don't ever have to think about being a dominant group member. Your world is natural and normal. It's not white. It just is.

When people can't establish a racial category for this guy they can't see him; in a sociological sense he's invisible. But what makes him interesting is not just that he could be passing -- moving between races -- but that he's playing with it

The other is a look at a serial bank robber in California who, with the help of a little foundation here and a little concealer there, has become nearly impossible to catch. I don't even know what to say about the reliance of our law enforcement system on racial profiling and classification. What would they ever do if we all fucked enough so that a criminal had the same color skin as an innocent?

Interview with Norton Juster, author

beatthief

March 10, 2001

"I realized that memory was

"I realized that memory was itself an event on which we needed to reflect," he said in a recent interview at the University of Rome. "Memory is not just a mirror of what has happened, it is one of the things that happens, which merits study."

I have a love hate relationship with the New York Times. Really, I guess it's a lovehatehate
relationship. Like any institution, it's a combination of the individuals who make it up and the historical ties it has to past events. But any time you theorize on memory you get me. Partly because my friend Irene, who authored the unbelievable long gone never archived web page Slow Down for Sloths enjoyed talking about issues of memory and nostalgia. Of course you can't ever see that page, but trust me that in Fall '95 it was revolutionary, and adorable.

Memory is the overarching role player in human relations. How you remember an event informs how you will interpret, which informs how you will retell the story which informs how people will react which informs the next decision you make and the cycle continues.

randomWalks is an example of the Internet replacing oral history and correcting, freezing or holding our memories. If you want to know what I was doing on 04/02/88, just check the poker history. As we "remember" new-old events, dates get added and deleted pretty regularly. When we (the global network of rW editors) reference a conversation or news event, there's a good chance someone posted it on randomWalks.

I posted in rW books (which has a broken archive - hence no link - no "Instant Memory") about Jhumpa Lahiri getting married to a "Westerner." As I used it, the term "Westerner" referred to a white person. Clearly Jhumpa, born in London, residing in New York and married in Calcutta is a "Westerner" as much as I (jewish male) am, and my post was literally reinscribing the notion of People of Color as "others" in the West regardless of birthrights. At the time I was in India, and reading her book. She had gotten married the day before a co-worker of mine, and my other co-workers seemed dissapointed she had married a "Westerner."

When my friend called me on it, I reevaluated my "memory" of the conversations about the book in India - my co-worker told me she had married a "Westerner," in part because they did not want to say "White guy" to my face. I never would have realized that in India, because the racial dynamics were obviously different there. In the case randomWalks held my immediate reaction - my memory - of the situation so I could reevaluate it later in a different context.

March 9, 2001

The All-Star Newspaper links to

March 8, 2001

Here was a woman who

Here was a woman who no longer could recognize her own children; a woman who had no idea who her husband had been; no clue where she was, what her name was, what year it was -- and yet, knew what she had been taught at a very early age to call black people. Once she was no longer capable of resisting this demon, tucked away like a ticking time bomb in the far corners of her mind, it reasserted itself and exploded with a vengeance. She could not remember how to feed herself, for God's sake. She could not go to the bathroom by herself. She could not recognize a glass of water for what it was. But she could recognize a nigger.

It's like when you go

It's like when you go to the bathroom. After you use the toilet, you must wipe yourself. That's how you finish the job!

According to Zen Master Seung Sanh, the happy Hollywood ending in "Little Buddha" is not good teaching. "Little Buddha" airs Friday, March 9 at 6:05pm ET on the Encore True Stories channel, according to TVUltra. Also see: more about wiping yourself.

Crawling in sewers is an

Crawling in sewers is an act of postmodern rebellion, allowing one to intimately explore and expose the conduit of our wastes, as well as intervene in the literal underground of urban planning. Fitting that a bureaucrat would imagine a way to eliminate the need for manual labor by building a little robo to do the dirty work.

March 7, 2001

What went wrong is that

What went wrong is that we allowed ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of security by media representations of crime and violence that portray both as the province of those who are anything but white like us. We ignore the warning signs, because in our minds the warning signs don't live in our neighborhood, but across town, in that place where we lock our car doors on the rare occasion we have to drive there. That false sense of security -- the result of racist and classist stereotypes -- then gets people killed. And still we act amazed.

Take a penny, leave a

Zoinks! Like, not even for

Today a young man on

Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration --
that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively.
There is no such thing as death,
life is only a dream,
and we are the imagination of ourselves.
Here's Tom with the weather --

Run this under ksh, bsh

It would be wrong to

It would be wrong to say that I would only be discriminated against because I am Korean or Asian American. I used to bus tables, and people used to think I was Mexican. The reality is that I might be discriminated against because someone thinks I am Native American or Latino or Asian American.

The results of the first United States Census to eschew the one-drop rule are due out soon. Unfortunately, most government agencies don't have a clue how to handle the complexities of an officially multi-racial American people.

The Supreme Court allowed Monday

The Supreme Court allowed Monday the Ku Klux Klan to participate in a state "Adopt-A-Highway" cleanup program in which volunteers pick up litter along a highway in return for a sign acknowledging their efforts.

March 3, 2001

what happened to the stalkers???

Holloway 7 is a brief

Holloway 7 is a brief exploration of how Jef Raskin's ZUI (zoomable user interface) is intended to work. Interesting stuff, but I guess there's no substitute for actually using something -- I still can't figure out if this thing makes any sense.

March 2, 2001

We do not understand why

We do not understand why everybody is so worried," the Taliban's supreme leader, Mohammad Omar, said through the official Taliban news agency, brushing off worldwide appeals to abandon the order he issued Monday. "All we are breaking are stones."

March 1, 2001

I ask them if Harris

I ask them if Harris allows people to smoke in the loft. I ask if they know where he and Corrin keep the iron. In one particularly surreal moment, I realize I've lost my keys. I enter the chat room and ask if anybody happened to see where I left them.